Nakhon Ratchasima (Khorat) Airport

Updated 2nd Sep 2026

No scheduled flights in Nakhon Ratchasima Airport's movement records

Nakhon Ratchasima Airport (NAK) is the civil airport for the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, also known as Khorat, and it has no scheduled airline service: the operator's own movement records, which run to 24 February 2026, hold no scheduled carrier at all. The airport sits in Tha Chang subdistrict, in the Chaloem Phra Kiat district of the province, about 23 kilometres east of the city centre in a straight line. The Department of Airports, the government agency under the Ministry of Transport that runs 28 civil airports in Thailand, operates it.

That agency publishes flight-level movement records for its airports. For Nakhon Ratchasima those records hold 27,183 movements across the whole of 2025, and a further 3,668 between 1 January and 24 February 2026, the latest period loaded. No scheduled airline appears in either set: every movement in them is a flight-training, military, private or assistance flight.

The most recent scheduled service on record here was a short test to Chiang Mai in 2022. Anyone who came looking for a flight into this part of northeastern Thailand needs a different airport. Buriram Airport carries scheduled service, and Khon Kaen Airport is a larger and better connected field; check the current schedule at either before planning around it.

Two airfields near Khorat share one name

"Korat airport", spelled either way, can mean either of two separate places, and they are 25 kilometres apart. One is this civil airport, east of the city and known locally as Nong Taeng Airport as well. The other is Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base, home to the air force's Wing 1, about five kilometres south of the city centre.

In flight planning each airfield carries its own four-letter code, and that is the cleanest way to tell them apart: the civil airport is VTUQ and the air force base is VTUN. They sit on different sides of Nakhon Ratchasima, so directions given for one will not get you to the other.

The Vietnam War history attached to the name belongs to the air force base, not to this airport. Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base hosted a United States Air Force presence from 1962, became a major hub for that force after 1964, and was formally returned to Thailand on 26 February 1976. It remains an active Royal Thai Air Force base.

The base was for a period jointly operated as a civil airport, and that arrangement ended when Nakhon Ratchasima Airport opened to civil traffic. Published accounts disagree on the year: the history of the base puts the end of the joint arrangement in the early 1990s, while the airport's own opening is usually dated to 1997. Older accounts of combat operations at "Korat" are accounts of the base.

Scheduled service has been tried here and dropped, repeatedly

Nakhon Ratchasima has lost a run of airlines. Thai Airways, Air Andaman and Kan Airlines all flew from it in its early years, and all three withdrew because the routes did not pay.

New Gen Airways used Nakhon Ratchasima as one of its bases, flying to Chiang Mai, Phuket and Bangkok Don Mueang. It suspended flying in August 2019, lost its fleet the following month, and stopped operating altogether in October 2019.

By March 2022 Nok Air's chief executive was calling Nakhon Ratchasima an abandoned airport. In July that year the same executive said eight airlines had previously ended services there, and gave a reason for it: the aircraft they flew were too large for demand of 70 to 80 passengers a flight.

The 2022 test service to Chiang Mai

Nok Air and provincial officials announced together on 14 July 2022 that the airline would start flying to Chiang Mai from 2 August 2022, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, using an 86-seat Q400 NextGen. Both sides described it as a market test rather than a permanent route.

The provincial governor at the time, Wichian Chantharanothai, said a demand study had been done and that the service would be promoted for the Chiang Mai high season. The plan, if the test worked, was to move to a 189-seat Boeing 737-800 and add days through the week.

It ran for a matter of weeks and did not continue past 2022.

What the airport is used for now

Flight training accounts for most of the movement in both sets of records. Bangkok Aviation Center, a Thai flight school whose main base is at Klong 15 in Nakhon Nayok province, runs a training centre at the airport, and says adding it took the school's capacity to 470 new student pilots a year. Its Cessna 172s are the large majority of all recorded movements in both 2025 and early 2026.

The Royal Thai Air Force uses the field too, for training and for transport: Boeing 737-400 movements were recorded here in January 2026. The rest is a small number of privately owned light aircraft and a handful of other training flights.

Passenger numbers in those records are close to nil. Exactly three movements between 1 January and 24 February 2026 carried anyone at all: two training flights with two people aboard, and one Learjet 60 on 30 January 2026, logged as an assistance flight, carrying two people each way.

The airport has one runway, 06/24, 2,100 metres long and 45 metres wide, in concrete and asphalt. Runway 06 has an instrument landing system, the ground equipment that guides an aircraft down onto it. The terminal building covers 5,500 square metres and was built to handle up to 300 passengers an hour, and there are four aircraft bays on the apron.

In the aeronautical publication, the aerodrome, its air traffic services and the tower all work 06:00 to 18:00 local time, every day and in all seasons. The same entry lists customs, immigration and health services as available on request, which matters to anyone planning a private flight in.

Khaosod English visited in August 2023 and described the passenger terminal as still standing with its seating intact and a single security guard at the entrance, and found the only activity on site to be private flight training run by a small company.

The push to revive the airport, and where it went

Provincial tourism and business figures were pressing the incoming national government in August 2023 to make reviving the airport a priority, arguing from the province's road and rail links. That was an ask for political attention rather than an announced project with a budget or a timetable.

The same 2023 report described the airport as having the potential to take Boeing 737-sized aircraft, and found the terminal intact. The operator's records for 2025 and early 2026 hold no scheduled carrier, so a revival here needs, before anything else, an airline willing to file a schedule.

By March 2024 the provincial ask had changed target: agencies in the province were asking the national government to open Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base to commercial flights, rather than to revive this airport. A feasibility study into that conversion was commissioned in March 2025. It is a study rather than a funded project, and any service from the base would be years away.

Until an airline files a schedule here, reaching Nakhon Ratchasima by air means flying into another airport in the region and travelling on from there. The Department of Airports publishes those movement records openly.